New House Homeland Security Chair Comes Out Swinging

Rep. Peter King of New York is the newly appointing chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and he doesn't have many nice things to say about the press coverage of Katrina, or the initial response to Katrina from the state and local authorities:

Newly appointed House Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King is blasting the media for slanting its coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster to turn public opinion against President Bush.

Asked why President Clinton wasn't blamed for natural disasters during the 1990s, King told WMET-Washington fill-in host Steve Malzberg: "The advantage the Clinton administration had was it didn't have so many TV reporters who were geared against the president that they would totally slant the news."

King said the Federal Emergency Management Agency's handling of the Katrina crisis hasn't been the unmitigated disaster reporters claim.

"The FEMA of ten years ago certainly did not do any better job under much less comparable circumstances than FEMA did this time," he told Malzberg, who was filling in for nationally syndicated radio host Linda Chavez.

"Of everyone involved, certainly they were the least culpable," the House Homeland chief said. "I think the main fault was the state and city of New Orleans - they did a terrible job."

The New York Republican added: "Our response plans are based on the premise that the local first responders will handle the initial onslaught. We were't expecting that the local government would do absolutely nothing."

I'm glad to hear a Republican forcefully make the case that the local response was lacking. It seemed up to now that everybody in the GOP was tiptoeing around the issue, while at the same time the Dems (helped by the press) were savaging the president. Now that the rescue phase is over, it's time to make an honest assessment about what worked and what didn't.

President Bush and Governor Blanco have now stood before the cameras and accepted responsibility for the actions of their agencies. Will Mayor Ray Nagin ever admit that his response was woefully inadequate?